Chapter 308

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ? Spring, 1833.]

One o Clock.

This instant receiv'd, this instant I answer your's--Dr. Cresswell has one copy, which I cannot just now re-demand, because at his desire I have sent a "Satan" to him, which when he ask'd for, I frankly told him, was imputed a lampoon on HIM!!! I have sent it him, and cannot, till we come to explanation, go to him or send--

But on the faith of a Gentleman, you shall have it back some day _for another_. The 3 I send. I think 2 of the blunders perfectly immaterial. But your feelings, and I fear _pocket_, is every thing. I have just time to pack this off by the 2 o Clock stage. Yours till me meet

At all events I behave more gentlemanlike than Emma did, in returning the copies.

Yours till we meet--DO COME.

Bring the Sonnets--

Why not publish 'em?--or let another Bookseller?

[Dr. Cresswell was vicar of Edmonton. Having married the daughter of a tailor--or so Mr. Fuller Russell states in his account of a conversation with Lamb in _Notes and Queries_--he was in danger of being ribaldly associated with Satan's matrimonial adventures in Lamb's ballad. I cannot explain to what book Lamb refers: possibly to the _Last Essays of Elia_, which Moxon, having found errors in, wished to withdraw, substituting another. The point probably cannot be cleared up. The sonnets would be Moxon's own, which he had printed privately (see a later letter).]